I've tried everything from this duplicate question but I still can't get it to work. The only difference from that question is that when I run env | grep TERM I get TERM=xterm instead of TERM=xterm-color. I dont think it matters though, they seem to be pretty interchangeable.

What I don't understand however is that the only thing that has disappeared is the colors in the actual prompt. For example, if I run nano and it detects the syntax of the file, for example if it's a script, I get colors. Also when I run the env command mentioned earlier, the actual TERM text is red.

So the colors are obviously working, it's just that I don't get colored folders, executable files and so on anymore. I think it also might have occured in connection to installing Ruby/RVM. I've tried replacing .bashrc. (edit However, when creating a new user, that user has working colors)

I suppose this has a pretty simple solution but I'm just so sick of googling this now that I'd really appreciate som info on how the coloring settings works in the terminal and how this could happen. Thanks!

I had an l alias in .bash_profile, so I changed that now to alias l='ls -l --color'. Typing l now gives me a colored list, but ls still lacks color, even though I've seen the .bashrc file specifically has an alias for it being colored. Ugh, thank you greatly for your answer though, I'll have to read some bash documentation.
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bigbadonk420Sep 29 '12 at 12:10

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ls (the default program) does not display colors unless you specify an option (--color=auto). If you want this to be the default behaviour, create an alias ls='ls --color=auto' (like most people do).
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JanuarySep 29 '12 at 12:20

Yeah, what bugs me though is that lsdid show colors initially (I think it's the default in Ubuntu Server). Nevermind, now I know how to fix it :)
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bigbadonk420Sep 30 '12 at 12:32

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The default in /etc/skel/.bashrc is to set alias ls='ls --color=auto'
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JanuarySep 30 '12 at 15:20